Requiem for the Lost Seasons
In the Mojave heat moved like a fever
through light as if the dusk promised
another lake just ahead another body
of palms whipped by a last new moon
night’s fanfare of black ribbons hung
along Moroccan mirrors & false pearls
their final embers gathered into songs
& folded within the melody those lyrics
of sleep laced by a scent of tombs as fog
follows along the narrow trails leading
up the canyon as silence again collapses
along the creek below erasing your desire
for day’s tangle of rain salt & heat rising
off the mirages yet a lazy raven remains
its listless irony one of the few pleasures
slowly crushing you setting you adrift once
more what happens to the promises made
in the rainy season what happens to sworn
revelations after the muddy fields dry what
happens if white blossoms of almond orchards
shiver & storm across ravines at the edges
of this desert blinding those drivers making
their ways home to other cities & other lives
to lies told within those lives told & repeated
to friends you know O you know those lies
I mean you know those lies you know what
happens to those seeds of California poppies
& the wild foxglove you’ve held in your hands
through this winter of raw abstinence saving
these precious seeds so they may be at last
scattered across your garden & caught by these
blood-scorched winds beneath the late May sky